A somewhat long hiatus

Yeah, I know. It's been over two months since I stopped to post an entry here. But I know "bloggers" who've been away from their writing or posting far longer, so I guess I don't quite feel so bad.

I'll try to summarize the busy-ness that's kept from being "regular" here in those weeks since I wrote about the Tour de France.

*** On Aug. 7, my second granddaughter, Addison Elyse, was born at St. Francis Hospital - South in Indianapolis. Two days later, Addison came home, and two days after that Addy's mother, Kelly Anne, noticed Addy had a fever and was twitching unnaturally. After a brief visit to the St. Francis emergency room, staff there had Addy transported to Riley Hospital for Children in downtown Indianapolis, where Addy remained -- invariably in the pediatric intensive care unit and the newborn floor -- until this past Monday, Sept. 28.

It'd be difficult to summarize the roller-coaster medical issues Addy weathered during her stay -- and she's still not totally over the hill yet. But it entailed seizures, infant apnea, three blood clots, a blood infection (MRSA) and a lower-extremities hematoma. She had ultra sounds, X rays, MRIs, blood tests, a spinal tap, antibiotics (intravenous and needle-administered), tubes coming from every place visible and temporary loss of vocal cords.

Family members made regular visits to Riley during the period, and I will cherish my several post-work, late-day few hours alone cuddling with her for a long, long time -- the almost perfect ones (where she slept in my arms start to finish) to even the ones where nothing could seem to comfort her. I was still with Addy, and I knew she was in far more discomfort than I.

*** Work has dealt me yet another formidable challenge. My staff merged with another in our features department, and I've been left to figure out how to make it work. People's work shifts and days off have changed, we're finding Tuesday nights and all day Wednesdays incredibly overwhelming because of the onerous workload. But this weekend, our two desks are now physically merging (from mid-July until now, we'd still been operating in separate locations in the newsroom), so I'm hoping the proximity and ability to have access to all staffers to throw on the sundry triages that surface on those Tuesdays and Wednesdays will give us a little better means to deal with it all.

*** I had my first public display of my photography in an art gallery show for a one-night, monthly First Friday art tour along the Massachusetts Avenue cultural district of downtown Indianapolis. Actually, I was among five members of a photo club who contributed images for the display. That occurred Sept. 4. At my photo blog, Photo Potpourri, I have a picture of one of three walls from our photo club's exhibit (which was at the Art Bank gallery).

*** A staffer at the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library called me last month to seek permission to use six images from my Irvington neighborhood gallery (at my Fototime.com online site) in a display the downtown main library plans to put up in January to represent the Eastside of Indianapolis. The display will be available on the sixth floor of the library's new wing throughout the month of January.

*** I spent last Saturday at Faught Stadium on the grounds of Franklin (Ind.) College, shooting photos of an exciting football game between the host Grizzlies and Trine University (Angola, Ind.). The Grizzlies came from 13 points down late in the third quarter to win it 30-29 on a 13-yard pass from Nick Purichia (a graduate of Cardinal Ritter High School in Indianapolis) to Adam Mellencamp with only 2 minutes and 25 seconds left in the game.

Pictures from my shoot there can be found also at my online gallery at SmugMug; a few of the images and a text summary also can be found at Photo Potpourri. I include this shoot in this summary because I took more than 1,000 images at the game, and the process of editing them all ... and selecting the 150 I decided to post on the online gallery was time-consuming. But it was worth it; it was a beautiful day for a college football game, I enjoyed the small-college atmosphere there (reminiscent of my years at UW-Eau Claire in northwestern Wisconson), and, perhaps most importantly, I was extraordinarly pleased with with quality of images.